Adolescent Development Program
Schools catering to underprivileged children, especially those in the rural areas, struggle to provide holistic education to students. While the curricular requirements are addressed to a great extent, the children are deprived of other developmental aspects spanning physical, psychological, intellectual, life skills, and entrepreneurship. As a result, students from such schools are inadequately equipped to face challenges that they might encounter as they move on to more competitive and demanding environments - be it higher education or life in general.
The Adolescent Development Program (ADP) works with schools catering to underprivileged and rural students, to enable them to provide holistic education to their students. The objective is to well-rounded
development of school children across all dimensions - intellectual prowess, life skills, psychological strength, physical well-being, and entrepreneurial mindset.
The ADP Framework
The ADP Framework aims to develop students holistically across 5 dimensions
More about ADP Activities & Projects
Here are a few more details about some select activities and projects that GEF has been successfully running over the last many years as part of ADP:
Amit Khare Training for Indian Villages (AKTIV) - Thinking & Teaming Lab
Adolescents today critically require thinking and teaming skills once they start their professional lives. We can’t wait till they go to college to develop these skills, and instead need to start this effort early, while they are in school. The AKTIV Thinking & Teaming Lab aims at improving critical, creative, and computational thinking and teaming among students by using Scratch as a tool. Across metros and small villages, we have found Scratch training to be extremely popular among the students and discovered that it helps in increasing their level of engagement and interest in learning. It additionally provides a foundation that is helpful for any computer/IT courses and jobs that they may undertake later. We have developed a bilingual (EnglishMarathi) handbook that takes into account the context of village students.
Online Spoken English
Many underprivileged school students perform well in 10th standard but face significant drop in performance thereafter. One significant reason for this drop in performance is a change in their educational environment that demands better understanding and communication abilities in English. Recognizing this need, GEF has developed an Online Spoken English program, based on the British Council Library model. With batch sizes limited to 10-12 students, the sessions are totally interactive, and are conducted by teachers trained on using this model. At the end of 60 hours of training, certificates based on performance are issued.
Amit Khare Training for Indian Villages (AKTIV) - Math Lab
Competency in Mathematics, at conceptual levels, is a critical requirement for any successful STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) career. As per Pratham ASER Report 2022, 80% of Class 5 can NOT do subtraction and 62% of Class 8 students can NOT do division. We require intense efforts to change the situation, and GEF’s Mathematics Lab is an effort towards the same. The Mathematics Lab teaches fundamental concepts, such as numbers and operations, fractions and ratios, and algebra - through interactive and/or gaming modules using simple learning material. We have developed two volume Marathi handbooks, too. The Lab follows a constructivist teaching style, which encourages students to think and actively construct their own knowledge.
GRAPES Lab for Psychological Strength
Psychological strength results in healthy cognitive, emotional, and behavioural responses. Stress of modern living has been taking toll. Many schools and parents are not taking cognizance of this, let alone act on it. GEF’s GRAPES model that covers Gratitude, Resilience, Achievement orientation, Positivity, Emotional intelligence, and Sophophilic mindset (Knowledge orientation), aims at building this psychological strength among students at an early age. The 30 hours package can be facilitated online in 6th standard, followed by assignments in the following 3 years.
Science Lab
Visual demonstration and hands-on experimentation are critical components of learning and understanding many subjects, especially in the Science stream. Unfortunately, many schools do not have proper Science labs and as a result students are deprived of opportunities to learn by observation and experimentation.
eInnovative Counselling
Careers define the direction of one’s life and students need to follow scientific approaches to define their careers and work on holistic development right from schools to enhance chances of their success. However, there is low awareness about this among both underprivileged and privileged students. While only 5% students in tier 2-3 cities use the counselling services, in villages the number is still lower. GEF provides counselling services based on its PAAA (Prospects, Aspirations, Aptitude and Attitude, Achievements) model and SACH (Strengths, Areas of development, Career prospects and Hazards) analysis. Career options are identified along with a holistic action plan. SRI (Select, Research and Implement) process helps the students choose the right options.